


Snub

by Fourthera



Series: Lucio Week 2018 [3]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: References to Illness, blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 09:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13384569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourthera/pseuds/Fourthera
Summary: Day 3 of Lucio Week 2018. The prompt today was "snub." Tagged for blood mention and references to illness (the Red Plague).





	Snub

            If there is one thing Lucio hates more than anything else he hates, it’s being ignored and dismissed. With a single clawed finger he beckons a servant to his seat at the head of the dining table. “Send a messenger to the lower district,” he commands grouchily. “Tell Veronika that I— _again_ — summon her to the palace.” The servant nods and hurries off without a word, leaving the Count with his rapidly cooling lunch.

            “No appetite again, Lucio?” Lucio looks over at Nadia, sitting primly to his left while looking over her papers.

            “Just not hungry,” he mumbles petulantly.

            “That’s quite unfortunate,” Nadia says, not looking up from her sheaves of paper. “That’s the fourth time this week; are you sure you’re not feeling ill?”

            “Noddy, I’m not feeling ill!” He slams his golden fist on the table, shattering one of the little tea plates. Nadia scowls at him and finally puts her papers down while the servants scramble to clean the mess. Lucio scowls at the wall, thrumming his fingers against the arm of his chair.

            “Was that necessary? I only ask because the people have been complaining of illness in the streets,” Nadia says, holding a piece of paper out to her husband. He waves it away without a glance.

            “The people always have something to complain about,” he gripes. “Disease comes and goes; it’s simply the natural order.” Nadia only hums in response.

            “While true, there may still be something strange going on in our fair city,” she eventually says. Nadia plucks her papers up with the air of a princess and rises. “Don’t forget to attend your appointments this afternoon. You can’t spend the entire day sulking after your pet.” Nadia leaves the dining room and in a bout of unharnessed rage, Lucio flings a knife at the door that just closed behind her. The blade wobbles from the force, but remains embedded in the door.

            “She’s not a pet,” he mutters murderously. “She’s a—“ He stops short, unsure of how to continue. Nika was too willful and freewheeling to be called a ‘pet,” but neither did he have friends. So what could he call her exactly? She was not like Valerius, or Vlastomil, or Nadia, and neither was she a servant. His thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of a servant boy.

            “Milord,” the boy says with a bow.

            “What?” Lucio growls. The boy shivers at Lucio’s frosty tone.

            “Miss Veronika was not at her store,” the boy says meekly, avoiding eye contact. “I spoke with one of her neighbors and they said they hadn’t seen her since last week. They don’t expect her to be back from wherever she’s gone soon.”

            “You are dismissed,” Lucio tells the servant frostily. The boy scurries out of the hall as quick as possible. Lucio stands from his seat, adjusts his cape and his cuffs, takes a deep breath, and with a roar, flips the dinning table, spilling all of it’s contents to the floor.

 

            Sweat beads on Nika’s brow in the relentless heat of the house. She looks over the rows and rows of beds, filled with the sick and the dying, and thinks, _Something is terribly, hopelessly wrong_. Each day, a few more people creep in ill, but from what she is miserably unable to tell. She presses a medicated cloth over her patient’s eyes, hoping that the tonic she soaked it in will help the burning and redness in the poor soul’s eyes. “Stay still,” she tells them. “The cloth will help your eyes. I’ll find something to help your throat.”

            She leaves the bedside and goes to the door to get free of the stagnating air in the house. Anxious citizens mill outside, many of them praying. Nika leans against the house wall, thankful for the cooler air outside, though it smells hideously of fish. Nika groans and shakes her head. Cooling burns and mending wounds is one thing, but disease control is another entirely. Since she’d first stopped by a week ago, the situation had only gotten worse; it started with redness in the eyes and graduated to burning fever and coughing up blood, as far as she’d seen. From the pouch at her hip, Nika pulls out a small piece of paper and stick of charcoal and begins to pen a note.

            _Asra,_ she writes, _gather as many herbs and remedies as you can. Meet me at the Fisherman’s Wharf Market if I’m not home when you return. Please hurry._ She folds the note in half and holds it in the breeze. She breathes, long and slow, and desperately whispers, “Take this to him, _please_.” A gust of wind blows up the street and the note takes off like a bird, gliding from her sight. A young woman approaches her then.

            “D-Do you know what’s wrong with them?” she asks tearfully. The woman’s eyes are red, but from tears and not the illness which afflicts those within the house.

            “No,” Nika tells her, “But I’m doing everything I can to find out.” Tears trickle over the woman’s cheeks, but she nods.

            “Why don’t the Count and Countess do anything?” the woman asks, mostly to herself. “I know our constable has written to them for help.” Nika purses her lips, remembering the servant boy from a few hours ago.

 

            _“Miss Veronika!” the boy called. She’d just closed her door and was about to return to the wharf with more medicine. “The Count summons you again!” Nika groaned and pressed a coin into the boy’s hands._

_“Go back to the Count and tell him I wasn’t home,” she said._

_“B-But miss! Milord is very angry that you haven’t been to see him since last week!”_

_“I know he is; he’ll be hideously angry, but I can’t go. Telling him I wasn’t here is better than telling him I ignored his summons.” The boy shifted from foot to foot, nervously rolling the coin in his hands. Nika crouched and put a hand on his shoulder. “It will be alright,” she told him. “He’ll be scary and mad, but he won’t do anything to you. If you’re scared, come to the Fisherman’s Wharf market, okay? I have to help a lot of people there.”_

_“Okay,” he said, though his lip quivered._

_“Good boy,” Nika said with a smile. “Tell him you talked to a neighbor and they said I’d been gone since last week.” The boy nodded and ran off, leaving Nika behind with a growing sense of dread._

            “I don’t know,” Veronika says, though she knows full well why. A single sob leaves the woman’s lips.

            “I will pray for you and everyone here and send anyone who knows any medicine,” the woman tells Nika. Nika nods and the woman walks away, wiping at her tears.


End file.
